Lads on tour… on bikes. Holmes, Dowds & Reid cycle across the USA.

Day 38 – Day off in Pueblo

Today I got up earlier than the others so decided to clean my bike rather than take it to the bike shop for them to do the same in exchange for a few dollars. I finished this and surprise surprise the others were still asleep so I headed down to the bike shop to buy some inner tubes and some brake pads which probably should have been changed about a thousand miles ago, but hey student loans mean you have to risk your brakes not working down the odd mountain or two!

I got back to the room and the others were just about ready to drop their bikes in for a service and head to breakfast. We were recommended a dodgy sandwich shop, Cal didn’t fancy this so with the limited distance we could go with no bikes we went to Subway for brunch.

Most of the day was spent waiting for the bikes. It’s a big city but like most places over here there’s not a lot to do without transport and where we were staying only seemed to have banks and insurance companies!

We did some laundry then we went back to the bike shop to check if Cal’s bike was ready and found out that they’d have to replace the bearings in the headset. A few weeks ago Callum found that he couldn’t turn his handlebars at all; we were worried, but he wrenched them round and suddenly they were OK! We just put it down to Reidy luck and carried on. When we noticed that the guys on the bike shop in Pueblo really knew their sh*t, we asked them to have a look at it. This is what was left of the piece of metal which holds the bearings in the headset of Callum’s bike:

Knackered. The bike techies sorted it out for a very reasonable price and they then recommended a pub to us just down the road where we could get some dinner and a nice real ale, on the way there Cal saw happy hour at a dodgy place so we went there first. We did get to the recommended pub and had a nice shepherds pie for tea.

Next we were off to the cinema, however on the way for almost the exact duration of our ride the heavens opened. Not looking forward to sitting in an air conditioned room soaked and freezing our Jacobs off; we went to Walmart to buy some cheap T-Shirts, then headed to the cinema.

After the film we headed back to Walmart for some bananas etc… and went back to bed

Day 37 – PUEBBBBBLO (~115 miles)

Usually we try to get some miles under our belt before stopping for breakfast but sometimes there are no breakfast stops within a reasonable distance, so we just have it first thing. Callum ordered breakfast in his usual way:

“Hi there, can I get the 2 eggs and hash browns but instead of hash browns can I get toast?”

The waitress usually relents because of the Reidy charm.

“OK thankyou and can I get two extra orders of toast please?”

On the ride we passed the Arkansas State Penitentiary, so we stopped to take a picture of Dowds, his chav tattoo, and the place he would be living if he had been born in the USA:

Today’s ride was quite hot. There was one point where a headwind came out of nowhere which felt exactly like sticking your head above an open oven-door. It only lasted a few seconds, but it was HOT. Dowds figured out that he drunk 8 litres of water and only…visited the bathroom/peed on the side of the road…once.

We weren’t sure where we would stop today, a headwind or a tailwind can completely change your plans, but we ended up having some reasonable winds, so we headed to Pueblo. As we headed out on the last stretch from the last service stop to Pueblo, a ridiculous side-wind started to pick up. I found it quite funny but there were some scary moments. One thing we’ve noticed is that to the unprepared British eye, every type of weather over here seems like it could be a tornado – but the photo below looks a bit…tornado-ish doesn’t it?

It wasn’t, and the weather wasn’t too bad, but when we arrived in Pueblo we were told that a week or so ago they had a hailstorm with hailstones the size of golf balls, breaking car windows and concussing bears.

Dowds got a puncture on the road into Pueblo so while I wore the high-vis jacket and hurled abuse, Cal headed off to find a motel for the night. Dowds swapped his inner tube out for one which had a dodgy valve so we had no idea if it would hold up for the 3 miles or so to Pueblo. We met back up with Callum, who hadn’t found anything yet, and as we got closer to the centre, Dowds had to keep re-inflating his tyre so often that he told us to go ahead while he walked it to the bike shop. Me and Cal spread out to find the cheapest motel and Cal found one for $39 inc. tax. Bargain. I was a bit apprehensive at first because while Cal was booking the room I saw a shirtless guy with a massive tattoo of a naked lady all the way up his back and a 70-year old jibbering incomprehensible man attempted to talk to me – I did the old smile ‘n’ nod. It turned out to be an awesome place. Quite a few of the people we met lived in the motel; they were all really nice, and helped us find a good all-you-can-eat buffet a couple of miles north of our motel. It was bloody fantastic.

Day 36 – Hot Day (79 miles)

Sometimes we are slightly…dishonest in the number of people who we say are staying in a motel room. This gets slightly confusing and worrying to the motel owner when the three of us all rock up to the complimentary breakfast at the same time. It got quite awkward this morning as the guy tried to stealthily check the numbers on our check-in form while making polite conversation. We managed to avoid getting charged the extra cash by being super-nice and talkative, something which doesn’t come naturally to any of us. The guy had an interest in electrical engineering so I fielded some questions as part of our whole being nice thing, while at the same time managing to trip a fuse by running the toaster and the microwave at the same time.

Outside we met some really nice people from Portland, OR. who were just passing through. One of the guys asked us about what we think of when we are riding. I asked the boys this ages ago and this is what we’ve generally been thinking about while riding:
Dowds – Nothing. Absolutely nothing. He just switches his brain off and watches his pedals go round.
Me – Singing little songs in my head – really random music.
Callum – Cal had been using the time wisely by thinking about what he was going to do for a job when he finished the ride – pondering his future. When I asked this question we were about a week into the ride, so I asked him what he’d come up with. Here’s the strange thing: he wasn’t actually thinking about what he was going to do, he was just thinking this: “I need to start thinking about what I’m going to do”. Callum Reid’s mind – a very very mysterious place.

The chap from Portland looked at us strangely.

Off we went, back onto the 96.

Today we had a stretch of road with no services for 58 miles. We stocked up on water at Tribune, KS and headed off to the Colorado border. On the way we met some younger eastbound cyclists who were doing a supervised trip across the USA. One of the laws of the tour so far is that whenever there are kids to laugh, one of us will fall off our bikes. As we stopped, Callum crashed into the back of my bike and fell slowly into the ditch. We all have our ways of coping with the flatness and dullness of Kansas – audiobooks and stuff like that- but Cal told us that he has been actively trying to hypnotize himself by staring at the gears of mine or Dowd’s bikes. As I said… a unique and mysterious mind. The eastbounders were asking if he was alright as we cycled up to meet them seemingly ignoring Cal in the ditch, but we weren’t worried cos we know the sounds that Cal makes and “oh…oh no” means he’s just done something silly but he’s fine.

We eventually got to Eads where there was a nice pool where we reckon they must have had a surplus of blue paint:

Day 35 – AMERICA Day (81 miles)

Yesterday we turned onto State Route 96. The maps that we bought come in sections; 12 in all for the Transamerica Trail, plus two more for final cheeky nip down the coast. Each section lasts about 300 miles, but it depends on how much they can fit on the maps. Section 7, from Alexander, KS. to Pueblo, CO. is 292.6 miles and it is all on ONE road – the 96. One of the things which has kept me sane so far on this trip is needing to keep an eye on the maps and not get us lost or miss a turn. For the next 300 miles there is only one direction – west on SR 96. Despite this, I’ve lost count of the times that Reidy has asked which way to turn after we stop for some food. Callum is truly brilliant at some things, but sometimes he…lacks awareness, bless him.

So, we headed west on 96, stopping in Dighton for breakfast at the only restaurant that was open – a bowling alley – and continued on to our planned stop for the night at Scott City. We got a call from Blake on the way, who had found out that there was a rodeo in the next town, Leoti. It was only 20 miles away so we decided to continue on.

We were glad we did. After the baseball yesterday we didn’t think we’d experience anything more stereotypically American, but the rodeo was… incredible.

The only restaurant in town was packed so we were forced to eat food from the stalls at the fair. I was trying everything, no matter how disgusting and ridiculous it looked. In fact I was deliberately choosing the most strange stuff – corn dogs, funnel cakes, whatever.

Funnel cake

The announcer requested silence for the Cowboys’ prayer, which was immediately followed by a tragically tone-deaf girl singing the national anthem.

Then loads of people in big hats fell off horses, threw cows around and, when the crowd was fully warmed up, fell off some big bulls as a finale. It was pretty much every American stereotype thrown into one big display. It was spectacular.

Buck Earnheardt Jr. shows us how it’s done

Intermission – redneck clown

This guy fell off

Day 34 – Windy Day

Today was a pretty normal day. Dowds ate breakfast:

Callum looked strange:

We cycled about 10 miles west, followed by about 19 miles north. In the second section we had a tailwind and managed to average 22.5 mph, which was fun. By the time we got to Rush Center, our planned stop for breakfast/lunch, we had done about 30 miles and averaged 19.4 mph for the day so far… which was nice. Our stop at Rush Center wasn’t quite as useful as we had hoped because it turned out that the town has ample provision for those who want to get hammered, but nothing for anyone who wants a bit of food. In this town there are three liquor stores and zero restaurants or grocery stores. Here is Callum asking if any paperwork is required for him to move there after we finish:

There were no shops for the next 30 miles so we started munching down chocolate bars and gettingready to go until a guy showed up in his truck with a plastic bag full of bread, meat and veg for us to make some sandwiches with. He had been in the liquor store when Cal was asking where to get food and had nipped home, sorted us out a packed lunch and drove back. We were very grateful and we can add him our mental list of exceptionally kind people we have met so far. Cheers.

Got back on the road and got hit with a pretty horrible side-wind/head-wind. It wasn’t particularly nice but we just stuck headphones on and plowed through it.

Freaking out pilots – bloody mischievous; those religious lot.

Arrived in Ness City, KS. in pretty good time despite the winds, but we were slightly worried about camping with some of the freaky weather that was coming in:

There was lightning over to the north, but it didn’t look like rainclouds. We asked around and found out that the city was on “storm watch”.
“What does that mean exactly? What sort of weather would you class as a storm?”
“High winds, driving rain, hail the size of golf balls… that sorta thing”
“Oh. We’re planning on camping – is that a good idea?”
“…Probably not.”

We cycled down to the place we’d be camping (a city park) and found that we probably wouldn’t get much sleep regardless of weather because there was a little-league baseball tournament in progress.

Callum also managed to pick up a puncture so me and Dowds amused ourselves by switching between watching the baseball game and Callum’s puncture repair techniques.

The baseball tournament ended up finishing early due to the storm which was moving in. I asked around some of the locals to get their opinion on whether we would be safe camping or not and eventually, after some conferring which involved the words “tornado” and “nearest storm shelter”, the consensus seemed to be that we should get a motel. By the time I’d talked this over with them, Callum had already pitched his tent and really didn’t want to move. When I walked out of the tree cover, all I could see at this time was lightning casting a silhouette of a very big, black cloud. Oh well. We decided to pitch our tents but be ready to very quickly pack up and leave if everything got a little bit too windy and rainy and scary. Callum’s tent collapsed after a gust of wind ripped out some pegs which we insisted he should secure properly on this particular night… so Dowds’ had the pleasure of receiving a rain-soaked Callum Reid as a guest in his tent. The next morning I snapped this photo of the happy couple:

During the storm we talked over walkie-talkie about the chances that we might be able to win an award for being the stupidest people to cycle across the USA. I think we’d have a pretty good chance.

Day 33 – Straight Day (78 miles)

Today was pretty windy, we had however got up quite early and were ready to leave town at 7.30. We quickly stopped at the post office for Chris to see if his mobile had come in yet, It had – good times!

As we pulled away from the post office, I went to clip into my pedal and half of it fell out! – Bad Times!

Seems like every time we get to a town with a bike shop, my bike breaks. I guess it could be worse if it decided to break in the middle of nowhere! After deciding not to get a service from the extortionate bike shop and deciding not to buy there $180 “only set of pedals in stock” I was left with very little choice! Only problem was, it didn’t open for another hour or so. The others decided not to ditch me – I think now that they know the advantages to drafting behind me the lazy sods don’t want to ride on their own!

We went back to Skaets, the same place as yeserday, for some breakfast then hit the bike shop at 9 when they opened. On the way there, Chris’ chain fell off again, looks like they didn’t actually do the work that they charged him for!

I looked at the pedals and didn’t fancy paying $180 so I started to look around the shop, I noticed a set of pedals on a show bike and asked if I could buy them? The owner wasn’t too keen, I guess he was banking on me being an idiot, but after telling him I would rather cycle 300 miles to the next bike shop with only one and a half pedals, than pay $180 he agreed to sell me the show ones. still set me back the best part of $90! It’s an expensive hobby this cycling malarchy.

We finally set off into a strong headwind for 20 or so miles. We stopped at this town to refill our water as we now had a 58 mile dead straight, dead flat road with nothing but farmland on it!

If there was no wind or even better, a tailwind, I could imagine this stretch being quite fun but with a gale force sidewind trying to throw us off of the road, this became very boring and tiresome indeed!

We rolled into our destination, Larned at about 3 pm. Not bad after the late start. We headed straight for the outdoor swimming pool but on our way was stopped by the local church Pastor. He offered us to stay in his church. A roof and a fan definately beats camping out here so we took him up on the offer and said we would pop round after our swim.

The pool was awesome. It was clean, big and even had a slide for Callum! After about half an hour in there, we were getting cold so decided it was time to go to Church.

The pastor was a really nice guy. So much so that he got Callum thinking about becoming ordained himself. Although i’m not too sure that the church would appreciate Callum’s reasons for joining – a free house and a cushty lifestyle.

We had been reccomended a restaurant called Roosters, so we got directions off of the Pastor and headed there. Turns out that it was a dive. After walking just to the porch, me and Cal realised this, didn’t like the smell and decided that Pizza hut was far more appealling!

We ate a pizza each and a couple of plates of salad, with the exception of Chris who doesn’t like salad, vegetables, fruit or pretty much anything else that doesn’t look like a chocolate bar or a burger. I think he is really a yank at heart!

We were all pretty tired after dinner, Callum went for the now customary restuarant dump and we headed back to the Church, via the petrol station so that Chris could buy a milkshake!

We got back, Chris found the grand piano in the actual church and set about playing songs that i’m not too sure are appropriate in a place of worship. Turns out the Pastor was really cool and didn’t mind in the slightest. The Pastors wife came over with some DVD’s for us to watch and me and Chris sat around playing on the internet.

Callum had gone missing for a while. We later found out from him that he had gone to the balcony of the church to try and crank one out. Unfortunately he couldn’t do it with Jesus on the cross staring straight at him so he settled down in the nursery, surrounded with kids toys and books instead.

We watched some of Wedding Crashers and went to bed around 10. Late night for us these days!

Day 32 – Planned Rest Day

I woke up early today, can’t sleep past 8! The others were still sparko so I went to the library to E-mail my tutor at uni.

I got back at 10 to find Callum still sparko and Chris in the shower. I got them up and we went to the bike shop to get our bikes. Callum refused to pay the amount they charged for sorting out his gears despite him going in with a bike sounding like the tin man running a marathon in the rain! It was quite an expensive bike shop and I couldn’t help thinking they were trying to rip us off…Thats why I decided that my bike was fine enough for them not to touch.

We went to a diner called Skaets – came reccomended by many so that was our breakfast sorted. After eating we headed down to the ‘Cosmophere’ space museum. In a fairly small town in the middle of nowhere I didn’t have high hopes for this place. The advert said they had a real SR-71 Blackbird but I guessed that would be all they had. Turns out it was pretty huge. We went to the iMax theatre and watched a film about some Beavers, had a couple of science lessons then went for a walk around the underground museum…The thing was huge and just kept going and going. Chris, as per usual, took ages, leaving me and Cal sat at the end bored for about an hour! Chris – I get my money’s worth whether it’s a buffet, a free bar or a museum you ignorant clod.

We went back to the Church to find Blake then went out to do some Laundry. Afterwards we went to the towns poshest restaurant, Jillians, for some grub. Turns out that not all Americans are obese inbred slobs, the more normal looking ones just eat at nice restaurants and not all-you-can-eat Mexican buffets! For the first time on our trip, dinner was genuinely edible!

Before heading back to bed, Chris had to stop at the Dairy Queen for an ice cream, or two as the case was. I really don’t know how he isn’t 21 stone!

Day 31 – Bad day (35 miles)

Woke up and tried to get moving but there wasn’t much motivation because:
1) It was a short day;
2) The next day would be a rest day;
3) 10 pitchers of beer and a few splashes of whisky the night before.

Got moving eventually, but not before Callum and Dowds beat me to the continental breakfast and Cal managed to eat everything except for a couple of packets of butter.

We chose to take a more direct route into Hutchinson, because it was 6 miles off-route anyway. We’d asked some of the locals if they had any idea how suitable US-50 would be for cyclists; we got conflicting responses ranging from “it’s fine” to “you’ll die”, but they did all agree that it had decent-sized shoulders and Google street view looked OK.

It wasn’t too bad. Not the nicest of roads, but the traffic wasn’t particularly heavy and the shoulder was OK. Callum had snapped his chain the day before by managing to avoid oiling his chain for pretty much the entire trip. As a result Cal’s bike sounded like he was cycling over a chalkboard with wheels made of nails – not the best thing for a hangover, especially for Dowds who wasn’t using his MP3 player.We stopped at around the halfway point for food and couldn’t help but laugh at Dowds who didn’t look too healthy. None of us felt amazing and we just wanted to get to Hutchinson. This ended up taking a little while longer than expected as Blake got a puncture a few miles down the road. Sorted it out and headed to the bike shop in Hutchinson who hold the keys for a free hostel for bikers at a nearby church. We found the hostel (v. nice), ditched our stuff and dropped the bikes in for some essential maintenance. Callum bought a new chain, I got them to sort out my gears, Dowds didn’t need anything but left his bike in there anyway and Blake… is a bike shop’s dream. New chain, new tyre – both were fine but he is an American so he is indoctrinated with the idea of regular servicing and we couldn’t convince him otherwise. Crazy yank.

Ate some food at a big mexican buffet place and slept like babies with the knowledge that tomorrow we had to do 0 miles.

Day 30 – Silly day (73 miles)

Callum wasn’t too happy towards the end of last night when we told him that the actual mileage for today would be around 75 – not the 60 that Dowds’ had roughly worked out before the extended ride to Eureka. Like a true Lad on Tour, he manned up and accepted it.

At some point we’ll stick up a post explaining just who or what ‘Blake’ is but for now let’s just call him our American pet – he follows along whenever he manages not to fall off his bike, makes lots of noise and barks outside the door at 4am when he’s scared of the coyotes outside.

On our Walmart walkie-talkies we’d been picking up interference from a fast food place or somewhere like that from around 6pm onwards. At the time we were looking for a restaurant so Callum asked the mystery people on the radio and they shut up after that. We left the radio on and at around 4am we got some really weird voice coming in over the radio. None of us were really sure if we were still dreaming – it was freaky – but eventually I woke up a bit and realised it sounded a lot like Blake. It turns out he’d made the 20 mile ride into town after seeing coyotes sniffing around his panniers. He couldn’t get back to sleep and decided to ride in the pitch black of night to our motel where we’d told him there was a bed waiting if he continued on to Eureka. My comment (over the radio): “Are you f**king insane???”. Blake got a few hours kip but not before having to wake up Reidy who was (understandably) absolutely petrified and woke up staring at him with his fist cocked ready to smack him one.

Set off for Newton around 9pm since Dowds had to wait around for the post office to open. He lost his camera charger before the holiday, tried to get one via express delivery just before we left but ended up having to get his mum to send it to a post office in the middle of the USA. After all that hassle, his camera didn’t work because he had accidentally filled it with rainwater a few weeks back.

We had a pretty normal ride, with one 38 mile stretch at the end with absolutely no services… which was nice. Just to prove that you will find Yorkshiremen bloody everywhere we met an Eastbound older chap called Paul Davenport who had cycled pretty much all over the world (including Africa, South America and the Andes in winter) and had just gotten around to doing the USA. Dad and Uncle Rick: sorry, forgot to ask if he was a Wednesday or United fan, but he did like Henderson’s.
Paul Davenport – “World touring cyclist and gentleman of leisure”

We met a cool American couple just down the road and did the standard exchange of info on what’s ahead etc.

We made pretty good time into Newton, with a short sprint towards the end just for fun. As usual the first thing we did was find food, and afterwards we went back to a bar we’d seen on Main Street.

After…a few…I snapped this photo which probably says it best:

Oh Dowds…

You can’t get the real American experience until you’ve gotten intoxicated with the locals in an ill-lit bar in Kansas… right? That’s our justification anyway.

We had planned to camp that night, but managed to find out which motel Blake had gone to and, in a reverse of last night, knocked on his door around 2am asking for a place to stay.

Lads on tour…occasionally on bikes.

Day 29 – Long Day (120 miles)

Just a quick note to explain why after being in Tappahannock, VA we somehow teleported into Missouri… We have been ever so slightly lax with the posting over the last 20 days or so. It’s not the thing you want to do most after a day on the bike – tap out a post on an iPod. We’re trying to keep up with the regular posting and we’ll fill in the older ones as we get the time.

We started our first full day in Kansas today, hitting the road around 7am. Had a truly effortless first 20-30 miles. No wind, and only the person in front had to put any effort in, which meant we only had to work for it 25% of the time. Nice.

Pizza Hut buffet for an athlete’s lunch before heading out on the next big stretch to our planned stop at Toronto (population 300, as I said they like reusing place names).

Kansas is pretty damned flat and from what we’ve heard and seen, getting flatter. Makes a very nice change to the Appalachians and the Ozarks. The miles just go by without noticing. Towards the end of the day we let Blake go behind with one of our Walmart walkie talkies because we didn’t have far to go and he was struggling to keep pace on the hills with all the pots, pans, stoves, sinks and Christ knows what else he has in those bags. This wouldn’t normally be a problem – we could just slow down a little bit – but Cal had his headphones on and wasn’t really too aware of the pace… or pretty much anything to be honest. Autopilot. We got into the town we were supposed to be staying at and had a bite to eat at a small diner a few miles out of town because everything in town was closed. Me and Dowds were looking at the map trying to figure out what our plans were for the next few days and what started as a joke suggestion to carry on and do a 120 mile day eventually turned into a tempting idea. We knew the sticking point would be Cal but we sweetened the deal by promising to stay in a motel and he was up for it. Now the problem was getting hold of Blake who was just behind us. Out of radio range, left my mobile in the motel yesterday… bit of a nightmare. We ended up calling the camp ground he was staying at and leaving a message asking the ranger person to go tell him our plans. We also managed to leave a voicemail on his cellphone and told the owners of the cafe to tell him to check his voicemail. We managed to get in touch with him later and we’re meeting up with the Bostonian tomorrow morning in Eureka.

It’s 9:30pm now – way past bedtime.